I believe that everyone should know how to fight. I consider it an essential skillset to living a good life. Knowing how to fight gives you confidence and a sense of security.
Fighting teaches you skills and a mindset that you cannot learn anywhere else.
Training in the art of fighting conditions both the body and the mind. A fighter’s mindset is called Bushido in Japanese. Bushido means fighting spirit.
Jiu Jitsu is the art of the samurai. The samurai prepared themselves to die in battle.
Life is our battle. You will die in battle. That is guaranteed. You should put up a good fight.
“If you fight, you might not always win. But if you don’t fight, you will always lose.”
Context is everything. Resistance is everything. They are inseparable to fighting. You will never fight against someone who will just let you do whatever you want.
At Zenyo, we don’t practice in a way that isn’t real. We strive to always train against resistance, in the context of a real opponent.
Jiu Jitsu is not so much about techniques but about context. You have to adapt to someone always resisting against what you want to do. In the fight, you will find things that you are able to do—your abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
These are unique.
That’s why we focus our training on the complexity of resistance. No kata here! You will only discover what you are capable of by realizing you are intricately linked to your environment, that nothing can be separated.
As soon as you try to separate bits and pieces, what you are doing becomes fake, unreal.
Keep it real. Fight for real.
Science Speak: You are unique. You are amazing. Your body, brain and nervous system are a marvel. They have a special ability to self-organize around a goal without the need for excessive conscious attention. You see, you act. American psychologist James J. Gibson pioneered this approach, called ecological dynamics. (Ecological dynamics is now encompassed under the larger umbrella of dynamic complex systems theory.) Gibson’s view is perception and action are intricately linked and that you don’t need to develop mental blueprints to complete a task. “We must perceive in order to move, but we must move in order to perceive,” Gibson writes. This is the approach I’ve been using at Zenyo. The idea is that you do not need special, detailed instructions or teaching. In fact, research shows those might hurt more than they help. You learn your own best way, individual to you, based on what you are able to perceive through the environment in the moment. You learn by doing.